The weeks building up to Hollywood’s awards season are usually a whirlwind of glitzy Los Angeles parties, lavish celebrity “gifting suites” and the raucous Golden Globes themselves — but not this year.
Not even Tinseltown’s glamorous galas could avoid being turned upside-down by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If a studio has a hot film, they will throw a lot of events, and invite people to attend to honor the filmmakers,” Variety awards editor Tim Gray said. “Those films seem to become serious contenders, because there’s so much attention [given] to them. I haven’t been to any events this year, in honor of a film.”
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Hopes of a return to the “normal” carousel of VIP question-and-answer sessions and elite soirees designed to entice voters were dashed long ago, as California was slammed by a staggering winter COVID-19 outbreak.
Tinseltown publicists — accustomed to throwing expensive celebrations at iconic landmarks from the Four Seasons to the Chateau Marmont — have had to improvise. As with many things around the world, that has meant honing their Zoom skills and shifting almost everything online.
While the Sunset Strip is adorned with its usual giant “For Your Consideration” movie billboards, voters are staying home to watch nominated films, while journalists interview actors on their laptops.
“I have been really strict about not doing any in-person gatherings. And the studios and networks have been very accommodating, actually,” The Hollywood Reporter’s awards columnist Scott Feinberg said. “Everyone’s just had to adapt.”
Meanwhile the Globes — typically marketed as Hollywood’s champagne-soaked “party of the year” — are being held today largely as a remote event in Beverly Hills and New York, with most nominees expected to learn their fate from home.
“Life does go on, as best as we can ... the only other option is to cancel everything and that would just kind of send a bad sign, like you know you’re waving a white flag,” Eugene Levy, star of Schitt’s Creek, told reporters.
“That’s what artists do — we adjust,” The Flight Attendant actress Merle Dandridge said.
Among some of the actors — who would typically face a draining marathon of palm-pressing events, and an ever-growing number of award ceremonies, around this time — there is even a palpable sense that they are enjoying the red carpet reprieve.
Amanda Seyfried, a supporting actress frontrunner for Mank, told an online panel she plans to spend the night at home with “everybody in my life, even my dog,” adding that her four-year-old would be allowed to “stay up as late as she wants.”
“Since it’s in the middle of the night, I’ll probably be in bed with the top half of a tuxedo on and my PJs on the bottom,” said British actor Nicholas Hoult, nominated for The Great.
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